te
stare with which his militant father had subdued outlaw horses, buck
soldiers, and Apaches, even his own son, when all had not gone well.
It was this which had inspired Bill Lightfoot to restrain his tongue
when he was sore over his defeat; and even though Hardy confessed to
being a rider, somehow no one ever thought of sawing off Spike
Kennedy's "side winder" on him. The quiet, brooding reserve which came
from his soldier life protected him from such familiar jests, and
without knowing why, the men of the Four Peaks looked up to him.

Even after his mission was announced, Hardy made no change in his
manner of life. He rode out each day on the round-up, conning the lay
of the land; at the corral he sat on the fence and kept tally,
frankly admitting that he could neither rope nor brand; in camp he did
his share of the cooking and said little, listening attentively to the
random talk. Only when sheep were mentioned did he show a marked
interest, and even then it was noticed that he made no comment,
whatever his thoughts were. But if he told no one what he was going to
do, it was not entirely due to an overrated reticence, for he did not
know himself. Not a man there but had run the gamut of human emotions
in trying to protect his ranch; they had driven herders off with guns;
they had cut their huddled bands at night and scattered them for the
coyotes; they had caught unwary Mexican _borregueros_ in forbidden
pastures and administered "shap lessons," stretching them over
bowlders and spanking them with their leather leggings; they had
"talked reason" to the bosses in forceful terms; they had requested
them politely to move; they had implored them with tears in their
eyes--and still like a wave of the sea, like a wind, like a scourge of
grasshoppers which cannot be withstood, the sheep had come on, always
hungry, always fat, always more.

Nor was there any new thing in hospitality. The last bacon and bread
had been set upon the table; baled hay and grain, hauled in by day's
works from the alfalfa fields of Moroni and the Salagua, had been fed
to the famished horses of the very men who had sheeped off the grass;
the same blanket had been shared, sometimes, alas, with men who were
"crumby." And it was equally true that, in return, the beans and meat
of chance herders had been as ravenously devoured, the water casks of
patient "camp-rustlers" had been drained midway between the river and
camp, and stray wethers had showed